Sunday I dropped Lloyd off at choir and then went on the most miserable of errands: looking for pants. I’ve complained about this process before so I won’t go into the details, so let’s just jump to the part where I successfully purchased two pair of pants that I’m none too thrilled with.
Whatever.
I got them from the south Lincoln Kohl’s, which is part of a shopping center that is new but has been mostly empty for a very long time. I saw that a couple of actual stores were going up, so I drove by, and then back to the road by way of a realty office, which had smoke coming from the sidewalk.
I drove on by.
Then guilt got me in the gut and I turned back around. I checked on the smoking planter and sure enough, it was smoldering. I grabbed the Subway cup from the car, went in the mostly-empty realty office and marched around to find a sink. There were two employees – an older gentleman who never looked up and a nervous woman who stared at me getting water from their snack area. “Your planter’s on fire,” I explained.
It took five cups of water and a couple good stirs. The (altered and photoshopped) photos here are stolen from their Facebook page so they show everything green and nice. Sunday was dry and windy. The dry mulch inside the planter had smoldered about 3/4 the way around, and was most likely ignited by a cigarette. (I expect Quiet Guy’s.) Why didn’t I have a camera?!?